BP Spill Now Spoiling All Gulf States As Tar Balls Hit Texas

Congratulations to BP and all the others responsible for the Deepwater Horizon disaster. You’ve officially managed to screw up every U.S. state along the Gulf of Mexico. Texas had been the only of the five states bordering the greasy body of water to be untainted by the spill, but that changed over the weekend when the first batch of tar balls washed up on the shore of the Lone Star State.

According to the Coast Guard, about five gallons of tar balls were found Saturday on the Bolivar Peninsula, northeast of Galveston, with another two gallons found Sunday on the peninsula and Galveston Island.

“It was just a matter of time that some of the oil would find its way to Texas,” said a science guy from the University of Miami.

Meanwhile, the mayor of Galveston sees a silver lining to all this.

“This is good news,” he said, not sounding at all like Murray Hamilton in Jaws. “The water looks good. We’re cautiously optimistic this is an anomaly.”

While the spill has barely touched Texas, it’s making inroads in Louisiana. Tar balls were spotted on Monday in the Rigolets, one of two waterways that connect the Gulf with Lake Pontchartrain.

And though the mayor of New Orleans said they are deploying assets to protect the Lake Pontchartrain basin, an official from the Louisiana Office of Fisheries expects the oil will eventually make its way into the lake.

As for the spill’s lasting effects, a commercial fisherman from Mississippi puts it best:

This isn’t going away. This isn’t a sneeze or a hiccup. This is diarrhea for a long time… My lifestyle is screwed. It’s over. The thing that I love the most I’m not going to be able to do anymore.

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I have mostly thought that politics and politiicans form Texas were strange, this just confirms it. A beach coast Mayor states “This is Good News” when informed that their beaches have been hit with tar balls, and a US Rep from Texas apologising to BP for Obama getting cash from BP to pay for their mess, and referring to it as a “shakedown”.

In complete context: Galveston Mayor Joe Jaworski said he believed the tar balls were a fluke, rather than a sign of what’s to come. “This is good news,” he said. “The water looks good. We’re cautiously optimistic this is an anomaly.”

Having the might of the US behind you and still not providing any help to the suffering and dying citizens of New Orleans, while patting the responsible person on the back and saying what a great job you are doing was a complete Bush failure.

Comparing that to an oil well blowout one mile underwater, where it is completely out of reach of most human abilites and saying it is Obama’s Katrina is complete and utter nonsense.

This oil spill can and should be lumped together with the rest of the Bush failures, in this case, the failure to regulate effectively.

That’s going to be a loooooooooooooooooooooooooooong time. The decisions a president makes are felt for sometimes decades after they’ve left office. Look at things like social security and Medicaid of which affects we’re feeling decades after the fact. That’s just the way it is. I’m not going to bash Bush, that would be way too easy and what good would it do anyway? But if I did want to be a smart-ass I would probably go with something like…

Ask the troops who served 3 to 4 more tours then they signed up for when the statute of limitations runs out for Bushs’ BS. Probably about the same time their PTSD turns into dreams of rainbows and unicorns.

This sucks, I shoulda gone to Galveston at the first of June when I was in Houston. Now Galveston’s going to be ruined by the oil spill and I won’t get to see it in its un-fucked state.

And seriously, I’d love to have some of the drugs the mayor of Galveston is having. An Ecological disaster begins washing up on your shores (the primary reason you still have any industry) and you think it’s good news?

I think it’s annoying when the post, as it is written, leaves out full context. The mayor wasn’t saying the tar balls were good news – he thought the tar balls could be a fluke, and not a sign of a huge problem, then he was saying that “it was good news.”

This was sort of a given even though BP has apparently tried to cover up the spill by keeping it underwater with dispersants. And downplay the spill as well.

I’m Mexico will wind up with tar balls and sheen along with the south east coast of the US. They say Miami will get it by August when that loop current has had time to carry the oil around the tip of Florida.

What’s creepy even though it isn’t many a community’s fault they are say stuff like come on down, jump in, the water’s fine with little or no ‘caution oil spill’ signs.

Interesting. There’ve been tar balls on TX beaches for decades, thanks to a history of offshore drilling. I remember family trips down to Corpus in the ’80s, when the hotel would give you little towelettes to wipe the tar off your feet after the beach. And when I lived in Houston, everyone said not to go to Galveston because it was one big tar ball after another.

I guess I was lucky. We always went in the ’70s and the only thing on the beach was those nasty Man O’ War jellyfish. My dad did step on a piece of glass, however. But that kind of thing is everywhere.

As someone who grew up going to the beach in Galveston – we’ve ALREADY had our fair share of oil, thanks. Dig 2 feet down into the sand, and it looks like fudge ripple ice cream. So, 7 total gallons of tar balls is, indeed, good news.

Why did no one pitch a fit over it to date, you ask? Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.

hopefully bp will continue to fight for the free market principles and refuse to be intimidated into cleaning up the so-called “oil spill”. requiring them to clean up or reimburse the deadbeats who stopped fishing is a travesty of the American ideal AND free markets!!!!